Abstract: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a kind of anxiety disorders developed from severe traumatic events. The key of treatment for this disorder is to extinguish conditioned fear memory. However, acquired fear memory is hard to be extinguished and extinguished fear memory is liable to recover in certain situations. Therefore, it is of great importance for PTSD theory and clinical practice to highlight the ways that persistently extinguish fear memory. In this review, we discuss two emotional regulation techniques that have been investigated as means to control fear: extinction and reconsolidation. Clinical PTSD treatment may be benefit from these pre–clinical methods which effectively extinguish fear memory.

Key words: conditioned fear memory, extinction, reconsolidation